Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion v1.1 Change Log

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion v1.1 Change Log

Now available via Steam

Stardock Entertainment and Ironclad Games are happy to announce v1.1 for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. This latest update adds dozens of new maps, balance changes and bug fixes as noted below. Version 1.1 is save game compatible with the previous v1.041.

[ Gameplay ]

New Maps! We've added dozens of new maps, including competitive multiplayer variants which normalize resources, militia and other factors (thanks to Pbhead and GoaFan77 for these). New maps include:

The Art of War Competitive

Battle Lines / Battle Lines Competitive

Blitz / Blitz Competitive

Close Encounters Competitive

Crystal Storm / Crystal Storm Competitive

Double Cross Competitive

Empires at War

Foreign Invasion Competitive

Fractured Lands / Fractured Lands Competitive

Gemini / Gemini Competitive

Hostile Orbits / Hostile Orbits Competitive

Kabel Competitive

Maelstrom Competitive

Melting Point Competitive

New Dawn / New Dawn Competitive

Pandemonium Competitive

Quick Strike Competitive

Random - Huge Multi-Star Competitive

Random - Huge Ring Competitive

Random - Huge Single-Star Competitive

Random - Large Multi-Star Competitive

Random - Large Single-Star Competitive

Random - Medium Competitive

Random - Mini / Random - Mini Competitive

Random - Small Competitive

Random - Vast / Random - Vast Competitive

Razor's Edge Competitive

Storm Front Competitive

Tempest Competitive

The Void

Triple Entente Competitive

Twin Empires Competitive

Typhoon Competitive

Unstable Alliance Competitive

Whirlwind Competitive

All corvettes are now unaffected by most harmful Titan abilitiesExceptions are Explosive Shot, which will still knockback corvettes in the AoE, and The Maw, which will still potentially draw in corvettes in the AoE (but won't specifically target them).

Ships should no longer try to use abilities on invulnerable targets.

Corvettes will no longer be explicitly targeted by Cleansing Brilliance or Reverie abilities (but may still be affected by them).

Corvettes are no longer affected by Magnetic Clouds.

Adjusted relationship bonuses per Pact with allies to grant a 0.2 Diplomatic Actions bonus per unique Pact (to a maximum of 2.4).

Adjusted relationship penalties per Pact with enemies to grant a -0.5 Diplomatic Actions penalty per unique Pact (to a maximum of -6.0).

TEC Loyalists

Titan: Can now cast Group Shield on itself.

Titan: Increased started HP from 5400 to 5500; increased starting Armor from 11 to 12.

Titan: The Maw will no longer explicitly target corvettes (though they may still be affected if caught in the ability AoE).

Titan: Increased the cooldown on The Maw from 175 to 210.

Titan: Starting HP increased from 4802 to 5042; HP per level decreased from 459 to 436; starting Shields increased from 2567 to 2696; Shields per level decreased from 533 to 507.

Vasari Rebels

Titan: HP per level increased from 405 to 445; Shields per level increased from 529 to 582; Armor per level increased from 0.58 to 0.64.

Rebel Starbases will now suffer from additional debuffs after a phase jump: Passive shield regeneration is decreased by 50%, Armor is reduced by 1.5 and weapon damage received is increased by 25%. Negative effects after phase jumping a Starbase now stack 3 times; debuff duration of all effects increased to 600 seconds from 60.

Stardock Entertainment and Ironclad Games are happy to announce the forthcoming v1.1 update for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. This latest update adds dozens of new maps, balance changes and bug fixes as noted below. This update is save game compatible with v1.041.

[ Gameplay ]

New Maps! We've added dozens of new maps, including competitive multiplayer variants which normalize resources, militia and other factors (thanks to Pbhead and GoaFan77 for these). New maps include:

All corvettes are now unaffected by most harmful Titan abilitiesExceptions are Explosive Shot, which will still knockback corvettes in the AoE, and The Maw, which will still potentially draw in corvettes in the AoE (but won't specifically target them).Excellent! Ships should no longer try to use abilities on invulnerable targets. Nice fix. Corvettes will no longer be explicitly targeted by Cleansing Brilliance or Reverie abilities (but may still be affected by them).Corvettes are no longer affected by Magnetic Clouds. Sounds good.

TEC Loyalists

Titan: Can now cast Group Shield on itself. Sounds like a very good idea. Titan: Increased started HP from 5400 to 5500; increased starting Armor from 11 to 12. Thats arround 430 total health increase.... cant harm for sure.

TEC Rebels

Titan: AutoCannon damage increased from 110.5 to 121.52; Missile damage increased from 127.5 to 140.25. I am unsure about this... the Ragnarov already had deadly 270 degree coverage, making it even more deadly... idk.

Advent (General)

Deliverance Engine Balance Changes:YAY! FINALLY! AFTER ALL THOSE YEARS!

Cannonshell speed increased from 12000 to 36000 (moving at the speed of thought!). ZOOOOSH.... TREMBLE BEFORE THE UNITY! Culture Spread effect increased from 5 to 15. That should make it a little less pathetic

The 25% damage buff to Advent player owned ships will now affect incoming ships as well as those already in the gravity well when the shot hits. Deliverance Engine shots will now reduce an enemy planet's Allegiance by 10% (stacks 3 times). That should finally do some economic damage.

Advent Loyalists

Global Unity now adds a 5% bonus to max. planet allegiance in addition to its other effects. Wonderful! Now there is finally a reason to research it.

Advent Rebels

Wail of the Sacrificed has been changed to affect all adjacent planets, ships and structures regardless of ownership. Nooo! My beloved wail! How could you? On a more serious note, sounds like a good chance. Still very deadly, but now more difficult to use and you have to be more careful when using it... before you kill your own fleet with it.

Titan: The Maw will no longer explicitly target corvettes (though they may still be affected if caught in the ability AoE). Sounds good, that should help corvettes to deal with the Titan that otherwise will eat about anything in no time. Titan: Increased the cooldown on The Maw from 175 to 210. Good change, considering that it is an ability that absolutly kills carrier fleets. Titan: Starting HP increased from 4802 to 5042; HP per level decreased from 459 to 436; starting Shields increased from 2567 to 2696; Shields per level decreased from 533 to 507.Why not.

Vasari Rebels

Titan: HP per level increased from 405 to 445; Shields per level increased from 529 to 582; Armor per level increased from 0.58 to 0.64. Why not.

Rebel Starbases will now suffer from additional debuffs after a phase jump: Passive shield regeneration is decreased by 50%, Armor is reduced by 1.5 and weapon damage received is increased by 25%. Negative effects after phase jumping a Starbase now stack 3 times; debuff duration of all effects increased to 600 seconds from 60.Excellent. Finally there is punishment for using them. Especially the damage received increase is probably going to be very helpful. With 3 times stacking the Vasari player may reconsider the wisdom of jumping the starbase, especially in a row. Now more unstoppable starbases that fly right to your capital. I am still not sure if it will be enough.... but for now it without any doubt deserves further online testing.

Armor Restoration technology bonus reduced from +25% HP / +5 Armor to +15% HP / +3 Armor. YAY. EXCELLENT! With the holy op jumping orky, most people forgot about this technology. Its old values were quite op, now it is down to a very powerful buff.

I like the VR starbase changes. It can even make sense in reasoning as taking such a huge structure through phase causes major issues and can be compounded with multiply jumps in a short time. Whether it will fix the balance issue remains to be seen.

Btw, is it just me who has noticed that VR culture rate gets pretty much raped when upgrading techs? I don't know which tech it is but the culture goes down to 0.5 with 1 structure...(Not sure what caused it, so you might have fixed it in this patch)

Interesting to see no one is weighing in on Wail changes. I suppose shock hasn't worn off yet

All adjacent planets being affected regardless of ownership is a huge tactical revision, and will cause a new trend in adopting AR play styles. The fact that wail had gotten to the point of being universally banned is a testament to how dynamically an impact it had on some games, but now perhaps it can be more mainstream again.

Specifically in random map multiplayer games, losing a high pop planet is a considerable trade off depending of course on the layout of the adjacent planets, the degree to which AR (and opponents) would suffer. Particularly with enough connected to a choke. This, imo, is more than ample justification to roll the dice so to speak in playing, and going up against AR. There are many suitable counters to a wail "situation", but most players simply categorically throw it under the bus.

The vulnerability of all connected planets now though poses a huge caveat, and I'm anxious to run through it in some games.

Quoting ARESIV, reply 15Imho we have to think about generally nerfing phase missiles sooner or later. Advent are way to vulnerable to them, giving them only poor changes in late game.

Phase missiles where nerfed when rebellion came out

Really? Well, if they were, clearly not enough.Vasari Rebels have one extra damage upgrade.... making the deadliest weapon in Sins even more deadly. Still only Tech 6 for them.

1. Max upgraded phase missiles did decreased damage or take additional techs to upgrade (depending on reb or loy)

It still a level 5 military upgrade (which is btw quite cheap) that makes any other weapon upgrade in the game look like nothing. Forget TEC Rebels upgrade, forget Plasma + Energy Aura, Phase Missiles own everything. I dont know a single Vasari player that resarches any other weapon upgrade before finishing PM tech... and rightfully so. It should also be noted that this single research tree makes the entire advent shield upgrade tree absolutly worthless.

2. Fighters ceased to use phase missiles resulting in teching it benefiting less one less type of unit

Indeed and rightfully so. That still leaves bombers that massacre about anything in no time. The usual Advent VS Vasari late game battle goes the following way: Advent fleet has a high level Titan, several high level Capital ships and of course a large frigate fleet coming with it. Vasari have the same. Now, what happens? Within 1 minute of the battle the Advent Titan dies to Phase Missiles..... sometimes with over 10000 shield points remaining... within 2 minutes ALL Advent capital ships are dead.... and within 2 minutes and 10 seconds all Advent support units are dead too. The rest of the Advent fleet can only withdraw, suffering further heavy losses.

The Vasari fleet might have taken some losses to, but only in the first battle those are going to be reasonably high. After the first battle, it is an uphill battle for Advent. Advent have not only to replace more ships with the worse economic to do that. (Economic wise the Vasari can built 150 ships for Advent 100 and TEC 200, estimated late game values) Also Vasari will have surviving capital ships that rank up even further while Advent NEVER ever again is fielding any capital ship above level 4... simple because they die in no time at the first enemy contact. And dont think that even a level 10 Titan is going to change that, it never did, no matter how powerful it was.

3. There are more things that give phase missile block (advent culture for example)

Leaving the Kol aside, that btw nobody builds for this purpose there is nothing but Advent culture upgrades to block phase missiles. And the culture block sadly has several major flaws:

It does only work in your own culture (This requires total cultural domination, something Advent, not even the Loyalist will have on any remotly frontline planet. Start a game with Advent Loyalists.... resarch the 20 % damage bonus in culture..... watch your ships when it is done. Then move your ships to a frontline planet.... you have be happy if you have 10 % of that power buff from 20 %.

Advent increased Shield mitigation in culture is simple said worthless against an Vasari opponent. By the time the Vasari has even shot down your unupgraded shields, your ships died 3 minutes ago to hull damage from phase missiles.

Vasari have highly useful damage bonus in culture..... that means 6 % additional phase missile damages.... so your ships die 6 % faster.... which isnt more than a few seconds difference as they die very quickly already.

With luck, highly superior economic (with Advent, nearly impossible lol) you MIGHT be capable of holding the line against an Vasari. Any attack however, it pointless. Advent have nothing to deal with a digged in Vasari thanks to:

-- Holy OP Disuptor Nanintes - see http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/430445-- Best Hangar defense in the game, the one that actually stops bombers-- Orkulus..... http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/431811-- and of course a nice phase tunnel which makes sure that no matter where you attack his entire fleet will be there to defend within 2 minutes, destroying you totally. (Not to mention that at this stage of the game he likely will have the highest sensor upgrade and as such knows for half an hour that your fleet is coming.)

For your information... in my third ever Vasari MP game I hold the line against an Advent player which had over 100 games more than me. He threw everything he had at me. He lost nearly his entire fleet including is Level 6 Titan in each attack.... I lost at most 2 capital ships, some frigates and a few phase missile turrets which I placed direct in harms way to make use ofn OP Disruptor Nanites. That should not happen. I saw how well he used his fleet. Under any other circumstances he would have crushed me like a bug. In this case I was slowly killing him.... on a large map there is nothing more deadly than Kostura with a VL Titan and - even the now balanced version - of Stripped to the core.

It should be noted that Disruptor Nanites do not stop once the ship has left the range or the gravity well. Thanks to gravity tolerance research, you can actually fly right behind him and overturn his fleeing fleet after 3 jumps..... Nothing like killing a non regenerating Titan that way.

Of course I was lucky to some extent.... not only was the map large but until he killed one of my teammates he was quite busy on the other front, leaving me time to tech up. Still, it is imho not balanced when a fully teched Vasari can deal with Advent like all those warships are little more than toys. http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/431121

4. Other weapon types in general have additional tech levels without decreasing the strength of preexisting techs.

aded phase missiles did decreased damage or take additional techs to upgrade (depending on reb or loy)

I am sorry, I dont understand what you mean. Could you please explain?

4. Other weapon types in general have additional tech levels without decreasing the strength of preexisting techs.

I am sorry, I dont understand what you mean. Could you please explain?

I hereby recommend the following possible nerfs to phase missiles:

IDEA 1: The brutal way:

--- NERF Phase missiles hard, and I mean so hard that you can hear the Vasari scream in agony all the way back to Kron.

Question to the developers: What was your intention with the phase missile tech? Was it meant to be the bane of any Advent fleet? Or was it what I think/hope meant more as a bonus? Right now most ships die with shields close to full power. Was that your intention? Or was your intention to have some hull damage as a bonus before the shields fail? Basically the ship is damaged with active shields, but in most cases the shields of the ship have to be brought down before it can be destroyed. For example:(values simplyfied)

Normal attack to a ship with 2000 shield points and 1000 hull points.

2000 damage done, shield are down, no hull damage.... yet.

Phase Missile attack to the same ship:

2000 Phase Missile damage done, shields are down but due to shield piercing the ship has already taken 200 hull damage.

The current implementations seems to be arround 1500 shield points remaining when the hull dies to shield piercing missiles.

Change the piercing values such that its a bonus, nothing more nothing less.

Advantages of Idea 1: That would nearly certain fix the problem and is easy to implement. Values can be easily changed in the future, should they prove to weak one day.

Disadvantage of Idea 1: Might have negative influence on Vasari TEC Balancing.... although I think Vasari are very deadly even without any phase missile tech.

IDEA 2: The medium hard way:

The most OP form of the phase missiles are the bombers. 30 Vasari Bomber wings are capable of doing damage superior to 80 TEC/Advent bomber wings.... for much lower cost. Now, I dont suggest giving phase weapons to fighters again... it is the same problem. So... either

a: Make bomber phase missiles have NO shield piercing effect at all

or

b: Make bombers have shield piercing phase missiles, BUT with CONSIDERABLE lower values than frigates and capital ships. Something like 4 stages:

Titan PM: Like now

Capital Ships PM: Slightly weaker

Orkulus PM: Like capital

Frigates PM: Slightly weaker than capital

Bomber PM: HARD NERF

Advantages of Idea 2: Vasari still have their high tech toy, but now at least their bombers are balanced.

Disadvantages of Idea 2: Lot of work to implement, cap ships + Titan + Orky might still kill anything with Advent markings way to quickly. Lots of work to balance all those values.

IDEA 3: Increase Phase Missile protection of Advent

1. Slight nerf to phase missiles to perfect TEC/Vasari Balancing

2. Give Advent a far higher phase missile block change. Spread it across the resarch tree to make it timely and costly.... punishing an Advent for not resarching them in time. Maximum block values should be:

Maximum phase missile block values:

Advent Loyalists without culture: 75 %

Advent Loyalists with culture: 95 %

Advent Rebels without culture: 65 %

Advent Rebels with culture: 85 %

(in the unlikely case those values are too high, they can be adjusted later. Keep in mind that you have to research a lot of stuff to have such high values. )

Deliverance engine: No block for technology but what about giving the Deliverance engine a buff that gives 100 % phase missile block for 5 minutes in the gravity well that was hit? Would no doubt sell any Advent player I know to build the thing for a change.

Advent Loyalists Techs that further increase general Phase missile block:

Better gameplay.... right now it is 100 % certain that the Vasari has all phase missile upgrades. That makes having the anti tech an absolute necessity. Now if phase missiles werent so impressive anymore against fully researched block, the Vasari might consider other ways of teching up. Which in turn will make the Advent become overconfident until the Vasari can severerly punish that overconfidence again. It would add depth... you have to anticipate what your enemies is doing a bit more. Makes bomber spam a bit less viable, giving the other factions more breathing room to build something different instead of hoping on a miracle that those 60 fighter wings will stop those 40 phase missile bomber wings before they destroy everything.

Makes the culture resarch more viable.... the current phase missile block implemantation is not worth the money.

I for one absolutely love this change. It keeps its destruction potential and in most cases greatly increases the cost of using it. Although I suspect Shield Bestowal will become a very important tech for the Advent Rebels to keep their structures alive through a Wail.

Same, 10 minutes might be a long enough buff to make a difference. But it will take players more skilled tactically than me to determine if it's decisive or not.

Another thing that struck me is that you can avoid a lot of the stacking of these debuffs by using the Orkie in conjunction with a Kostura shot. However that would require that you maintain a total of 16 labs which should push it to late game. It also strikes me that this change is going to have a much greater affect on MP games where things happen very quickly. In the SP games I've play using VR (and against the higher AI levels), I'm usually advancing pretty slowly from one planet to the next with my Orkie and fleet. It probably takes me 10 minutes to take each planet, in which case the debuffs wouldn't stack anyways.

I really haven't heard anyone complain that Phase Missiles on Assailants are overpowered - its only the bombers. If this is true, then maybe you could 1) nerf the damage output of the Vasari bombers or 2) buff Telekinetic Push against the Vasari. Point 2 could be accomplished by changing it to do a percentage of total hull point of damage against strikecraft. That way they would do more damage against the beefier Vasari bombers without becoming overpowered against the other races strikecraft. Either of these changes could be made relatively easily.

Quoting Protoplazm, reply 21Interesting to see no one is weighing in on Wail changes.

Quoting Ryat, reply 17As for phase missiles, well that is a whole different can of worms.

I really haven't heard anyone complain that Phase Missiles on Assailants are overpowered - its only the bombers. If this is true, then maybe you could 1) nerf the damage output of the Vasari bombers or 2) buff Telekinetic Push against the Vasari. Point 2 could be accomplished by changing it to do a percentage of total hull point of damage against strikecraft. That way they would do more damage against the beefier Vasari bombers without becoming overpowered against the other races strikecraft. Either of these changes could be made relatively easily.

Well I certainly agree it's primarily bombers that are the issue. The problem is it would take a pretty substantial damage hit to bring vasari bombers in line with the other races. If we use the assumption that assailants are balanced as our baseline, vasari bombers would need to take something like a 25-30% DPS reduction(down from 17*ish* per squad to around 12.5).

Seriously though, that is why assailants are balanced- they compensate for their superior weapon techs by having 25-30% less DPS per supply then their nearest analogue(the Javelis). By contrast Vasari bombers have pretty much the same DPS as the other races despite their vastly superior weapon techs.

It doesn't help that vasari bombers are also the hardest to kill- but the core of the problem lies with phase missiles.

That said though, while the Advent feel it most keenly, I don't think the problem is unique to them. the fact of the matter is that Vasari Bombers hit the critical mass necessary to be flying-doom for any capitalship at a substantially lower number of carriers then the other factions. And being that bombers in general are already eternally straddling the line between balanced and too strong, having one faction's bombers head and shoulders above the others seems a poor balance proposition.

The changes to the VR starbase seem to be in the right direction. I agree that we should play test this update for awhile, as I think the nerfs brought by v1.04 and v1.1 should effectively bring VR back in balance.

Also, it appears Wail has been effectively nerfed into oblivion. Not quite sure I agree with the change, and I'm a Vasari player that has been on the wrong end of Wail multiple times.

Also, it appears Wail has been effectively nerfed into oblivion. Not quite sure I agree with the change, and I'm a Vasari player that has been on the wrong end of Wail multiple times.

I'm mainly an Advent Rebel player, and I think that's going to be an exaggeration. As long as your fleet is at the planet you trigger wail at it is still perfectly safe to use. Maybe a fully upgraded terran might be a threat to structures, but anything less can certainly tank the damage from it, especially with repair bays and shield bestowal. All this change does is give you a chance to really screw yourself or an ally over if you're not paying attention, or if you're trying to retreat into wail range and an enemy fleet is chasing you.